Russia: Talks with Georgia to normalize

MOSCOW, April 19 (UPI) -- Russia plans to normalize its troubled relationship with Georgia, including the country's breakaway regions, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Ministry spokesman Mikhail Karmynin said Russia would lift all existing sanctions against Georgia and its people in an attempt to facilitate improved relations with the country in the future, Euronews.net reported Saturday.

"The Russian federal authorities have been authorized to take steps to lift the remaining visa restrictions for Georgian nationals and to begin bilateral consultations at the expert level on the issues of access for Georgian goods onto the Russian market," Karmynin said.

Yet the speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Nino Burjanadze, expressed concern that Russia had alternative intentions.

"I'm afraid that it is something which is signed especially to create some specific attention of the international community concerning this issue, because from the one side, to speak about normalization of relations with Georgia, and from another side to have some special relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, this is something absolutely unacceptable," the Georgian official said.